Rt: Effective Reproduction Number of Covid-19 - <AUTHOR> https://rt.live <comment><USER2> IMO this looks to by a symptom of lack of testing. Overall the ratio of tests coming back positive is unchanged:

[https://raw.githubusercontent.com/lettergram/covid19-analysi...](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/lettergram/covid19-analysis/master/graphs/us- test-ratios.png)

Even though we are doing more tests. Meaning the reduction in speed-of-spread likely has more to do with lack of testing.

That being said, I'm sure spread is being reduced, we just don't know to what extent because we don't have enough effective testing.

It's also possible (probably likely) our tests are not exceptionally accurate. It's the best we have, but given all of this is <6 months old the false positive/negative rate can be high.

Generally, Testing isn't an effective way to measure spread. Probably we should use "hospitalizations with flu symptoms" as the best indicator.

You can compare testing per state and deaths here:

Tests: [https://raw.githubusercontent.com/lettergram/covid19-analysi...](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/lettergram/covid19-analysis/master/graphs/us- tests-by-state.png)

Deaths: [https://raw.githubusercontent.com/lettergram/covid19-analysi...](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/lettergram/covid19-analysis/master/graphs/us- deaths-by-state.png)

Overall repo: [https://github.com/lettergram/covid19-analysis](https://github.com/lettergram/covid19-analysis)

<comment><USER3> The reported specificity and sensitivity of RT-PCR testing is quite good, but obviously not 100%. RT-PCR is considered the "gold standard" in viral testing.

If you want to contact trace, we would need many orders of magnitude more testing.

If you want to know prevalence over time, and therefore Rt, we could ascertain it very accurately with much _less_ testing, but it would need to be done against statistically valid and unbiased random samples of the population, not at all what is going on today.

Since the testing we are doing today doesn't really satisfy either condition, and there's also no front-line approved treatments for those that are definitively diagnosed (rather, we treat the symptoms, which are self- evident), frankly I'm not sure I understand the extreme focus on testing.

<comment><USER4> _I 'm not sure I understand the extreme focus on testing._

3blue1brown on YouTube created a simple model that suggests that testing and quarantine of positive cases is the most effective way to slow the spread (within the simplified model). Testing should allow us to isolate just the infected, and ease off the restrictions on others.

<comment><USER5> With statistically valid random testing, even detecting clusters / communities (as opposed to individuals) and clearing same would be conducive to reopening the economy.

Unfortunately, the path to doing so "I'm going to force you to get tested, despite you having no symptoms" is political anathema.

<comment><USER3> No, no, there's never going to be enough testing to test asymptomatic cases — Thats _everybody_.

And a test doesn't tell you you aren't going to be positive tomorrow. It just tells you you weren't positive 48 hours ago!

Fauci explained all this live at the press conference. I wish people would listen. With AIDS it's different. You can get tested, be negative, take no at- risk behaviors, and a year later that negative test is still relevant. With COVID by the time you have a negative test result back it's no longer even _relevant_. Only positive tests are relevant.

The fact is that there's no point in testing people to demonstrate that they are negative. And there will never be enough testing to test every asymptomatic person, and a significant proportion of spread is from asymptomatic carriers. Those three incontrovertible facts lead to some very basic and sobering conclusions.

So this fear of people being forced to show a negative test assumes we've somehow found our way into an anti-science twilight zone kabuki theater to begin with. Which frankly wouldn't be far off from where we are already, but can we please at least acknowledge it's based on fear and hysteria and not any kind of science?

<comment><USER6> > With COVID by the time you have a negative test result back it's no longer > even relevant.

A family friend died on Friday. His heart went out on him. Big guy on his 60's. He got tested for COVID-19 before he died at the hospital. He and his now widow had some sinus congestion. She couldn't enter to he hospital to be with him when he died. A few days later, his widow got the negative result for her husband. She is alone, scared, dealing with this loss. can't see her kids or grandkids. She can sleep a little better at night knowing that death is not knocking at her doorstep.

Relevant? From a human perspective it is most definitely relevant. Maybe not as much from a epidemiology or number cruncher's perspective but like all expert opinions they are open to interpretation and second opinions. Statistics are easy to cherry pick for whatever agenda is being pushed behind the scenes.

Just like masks were not relevent at first. They were scarce. Suddenly they are relevant for the public to use. I believe this testing scarcity and related lack of any cohesive national mobilization is the biggest failure of our US government. From a public health perspective this dismissal of negative testing is just a way to manage the demand side for testing.

Public health and epidemiology experts have very different motivations than individuals dealing with loss and fear during this crazy time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Here's an alternative set of per-US-state Rt estimates from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, with somewhat different results: [https://epiforecasts.io/covid/posts/national/united- states/](https://epiforecasts.io/covid/posts/national/united-states/)

They believe there's insufficient data to estimate Rt _today_ , though, due to lags in symptoms/diagnosis/testing/reporting. So their estimates lag about 10 days, with the x-axis for the Rt-over-time graphs currently running February 17 through April 7.

They also have per-country estimates: [https://epiforecasts.io/covid/posts/global/](https://epiforecasts.io/covid/posts/global/)

<comment><USER8> I've been following their maps over the last week and I have noticed a lot of variation day-to-day. I have seen three different statuses for California so far, for example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Great looking site. For those who don't know/realize - this is the work of Kevin Systrom, Mike Krieger (and team?) - co-founders of Instagram.

Statistically speaking - love that it has error bars and timeseries. Makes it infinitely more informative to track relative to news, events, and mitigation strategies and have a sense of the confidence of the estimate. The provided Jupyter notebook is a great resource.

Alphabetically speaking - I enjoyed the puzzle of figuring out how the states were sorted in the timeseries list (e.g. why was Alaska before Alabama, Iowa before Idaho, etc.). Turns out it's alphabetical by the two letter state abbreviation which is not shown - just a fun observation :)

<comment><USER3> Ah, thank you for pointing out the author. Helps with the inferiority complex for my past attempts at data visualization dashboards.

It does say in the footer: "Data analysis by Kevin Systrom and site built by Mike Krieger, with thanks to Ryan O'Rourke and Robby Stein."

I particularly liked browsing the code for the hero chart, which you can find under static/js/StackViz.js. 630 lines of JS and you can see the level of attention to detail.

I couldn't find a copyright or licensing statement, but there are a few pieces of StackOverflow code copied and pasted into the bundle, so in theory the whole code base is therefore open source.

<comment><USER10> Where did you find static/js/StackViz.js?

<comment><USER3> It's in the bundle. Using dev tools in your browser you can get an expanded view of the file/folder structure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This really illustrates that the parameter in question is not just a characteristic of the virus, but also of the environment.

I think a lot of people forget that if try to return to normal activity this is just going to shoot back up. I have yet to see an exit strategy other than "modulate social distancing such that the health care system is near capacity, we can gradually open up as more people are immune due to prior infection."

<comment><USER12> It's not obvious that it will shoot back up, depending on how careful we all about the return. People talk a lot about the multiple waves of the Spanish Flu, but the logical consequence of that is that transmission of a respiratory disease _can_ be sustainably reduced; otherwise there would have only been the one wave.

<comment><USER13> The flu is seasonal, the first wave died down during the summer and the second wave started in the fall.

<comment><USER12> "Seasonal" just means that we see this pattern regularly every year. It's not that there's some specific property of the flu which stops it from spreading during the summer - there could be, but we don't know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's wild that California has been locked down for a full month and the reproduction number is still hovering around 1 and even went up a couple of days ago.

If that's actually true, we shouldn't expect to see a quick decrease in cases and we probably aren't on track to end the lockdown any time before at least June. I can't help but wondering if the unlimited outside time under the guise of "exercise", but which people are clearly taking advantage of by going to hang out with friends in the park, has anything to do with it. Or perhaps it's the lack of masks in indoor areas like grocery stores that has prevented a bigger drop (in SF, only starting today has that finally changed).

For all that California has been praised for acting quickly, it still feels like we've really been slow playing this lockdown by being so lenient, and without really having gained anything. And it doesn't really seem like there's any urgency anymore around continuing to increase testing, even though we know that's needed to open back up. Now we're going to be stuck inside for weeks or months longer than we would have needed to be if we had just copied what successful countries (Taiwan, South Korea) did from the beginning.

<comment><USER15> At the same time other countries like Belarus have done nothing and haven't done worse than CA. Or consider Sweden has ~81% of the rate of COVID per capita as the UK and has ~65% of the death per capita as the UK but no lockdown.

Edit. I don't mean to go against the prevailing opinions but it seems like something that merits more research. There's a lot we don't know about this virus.

<comment><USER16> Here's an interesting interview with a senior epidemiologist partly responsible for Sweden's unconventional strategy:

[https://youtu.be/bfN2JWifLCY](https://youtu.be/bfN2JWifLCY)

TL;DW: Preventing transmission in the long term is impossible and the actual fatality rate is likely on the order of 0.1%, so general lockdowns are pointless and being driven mostly by political considerations (something must be done and this is something). Just protect the elderly and weak.

<comment><USER17> > actual fatality rate is likely on the order of 0.1%

This is ludicrously optimistic. The virus has already killed over 0.1% of the _entire population_ of New York City, and it's barely starting to wind down (i.e. will probably hit 0.2%). It's also approaching 0.1% of the entire populations of several of the hardest hit areas across the US (Bergen County, NJ; Chelsea, MA; Orleans Parish, NJ), with the most optimistic antibody and random sampling studies suggesting no more than one-third of the total populations infected at this point.

Some of the most reasonably optimistic numbers that are being bandied about nowadays are three to four times higher than that (0.3-0.4%), though I think the majority of the evidence points to a range more like 0.5-1.0%.

<comment><USER18> > The virus has already killed over 0.1% of the entire population of New York > City

Wait, what? That would be one person in every 1000? Population of 8,398,748[1] that would be... huh. Confirmed deaths, 8,448[2].

Nice, as they say on another site.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City)

[2] [https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page](https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Anyone else think this was Russia Today from the URL on first glance?

<comment><USER20> I was pretty worried it was.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> These are pretty, but given the inconsistent testing regimes, difficult to interpret.

<comment><USER22> I believe that inconsistency is factored into, and indicated by the error bars and the width of the range indicators for each graph.

<comment><USER12> I'm not sure that "we might not be measuring the right thing in the first place" is the kind of error that can be sufficiently accounted for by error bars.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Great visualizations - I'd love to see this done with hospitalizations though as case count overestimates r given increasing testing. (Granted hospitalizations are also breaking down recently due to recent disproportionate nursing home infections)

E.g. CA is unlikely to have had an r above 2 even at beginning of March, but this is calculating close to 3. (Source: [https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.12.20062943v...](https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.12.20062943v1.full.pdf)).

</comment><comment><USER24> They list the following known issues:

1) Changes in testing will affect numbers.

2) The delay between infection and testing is ignored so actual Rt values are delayed by some amount.

Both are huge actual issues.

</comment><comment><USER25> The ramp-up in testing has an effect on these observations (thinking specifically about the early spikes in many places):

> Absolute testing levels should not affect this algorithm much, but a fast > ramp or decline in testing will affect numbers.

</comment><comment><USER26> Does anybody know if the testing numbers are per patient or per test? I was trying to run some bayes simulations yesterday and while debating it we couldn't figure out anything useful, because the statistics we were able to find are already rolled up and the methodology is hidden.

</comment><comment><USER27> Great job! I live in HI (top 4 states according to the website), it looks like they are gonna start loosening up restrictions in a couple of weeks. It will be interesting to see how Rt evolves after that. There's a couple of states where Rt started increasing again after some time (e.g. WA).

<comment><USER23> Most of those increases are artifacts of testing parameters changing or reporting delays, not actual infection rates. WA data here is quite misleading.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This could also be an interesting data point for anyone who needs to pick a location for establishing a new business.

Lesser Rt number _might_ mean safer operating environment and healthier employees.

</comment><comment><USER29> This is awesome! Sure the data is not perfect but it's what we've for and the r naught is exactly what we need to be monitoring.

<comment><USER30> This monitors Rt (r-effective) not R0(r-naught)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> These are just toys while testing remains as sparse as it is.

Don't look at these and think it's over.

</comment><comment><USER32> Beautiful! What gets measured gets managed.

</comment><comment><USER33> Another COVID tracker that leaves Puerto Rico out of the United States. I don't even know why I'm still surprised.

<comment><USER34> Looks like you can create a PR about on the notebook and/or run it now if you're curious: [https://github.com/k-sys/covid-19/blob/master/Realtime%20R0....](https://github.com/k-sys/covid-19/blob/master/Realtime%20R0.ipynb) as the data source has territories and the capital but they filtered out anything that's not a state.

<comment><USER33> The District of Columbia is not a state, and yet is included.</comment></comment></comment>


SpaceX - Why the US Can Beat China: The Facts About SpaceX Costs - <AUTHOR> http://www.spacex.com/usa.php <comment><USER2> You really have to admire the level of transparency surrounding their operations. Blows just about every other US government contractor out of the water.</comment>


Miguel de Icaza: MS has shot the .NET ecosystem in the foot (Google cache) - <AUTHOR> http://126.96.36.199/search?q=cache:O6bmbLpdB1gJ:www.sdtimes.com/DOES_WINDOWS_COST_MICROSOFT_OPPORTUNITIES_/By_David_Worthington/About_NET_and_WINDOWS/34203+http://www.sdtimes.com/link/34203&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk

<comment><USER2> I think he was being overly optimitic in the first place. Microsoft doesn't want a cross platform system. They were just throwing out a bone with C#. Having their tools be truly cross platform is not in their best business interest, and no one blames them. Miguel should have understood this when he started Mono.

<comment><AUTHOR> And so people have been telling him all along. Last summer, RMS called him out (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=846221>) and he responded with calling RMS a fear monger (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=864047>).

As usual, RMS was right, and there was no shortage of other people trying to get de Icaza to see this, ever since he started with the Mono project.

It has indeed taken some time, but I'm happy that de Icaza finally seem to have understood. It will be interesting to see which direction Mono will take now, and where this fits in with the bigger picture of Novell's and Microsoft's future.

<comment><USER3> I'm confused; has anything actually changed?

There doesn't seem to be any new legal threats, just quotes from Icaza acknowledging that other people are scared of following his lead due to existing patent fears. I don't see any hint that Icaza thinks the threat is real, or threatens future development of Mono.

<comment><USER4> "Microsoft has shot the .NET ecosystem in the foot because of the constant threat of patent infringement that they have cast on the ecosystem."

De Icaza is not acknowledging that some people are scared of patent infringement. He's acknowledging that Microsoft itself has scared people away through its constant threats.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I thought Miguel was Mr. "there is no legal threat, Mono is fine."

Example from 05:

"Every piece of software written today is likely going to infringe on someone else's patent... Our strategy in dealing with patents in Mono is the same strategy that any other software developer would take."

[http://ondotnet.com/pub/a/dotnet/2005/03/21/interviewmiguel....](http://ondotnet.com/pub/a/dotnet/2005/03/21/interviewmiguel.html)

<comment><USER6> I'm pretty sure he is still saying that. The article only acknowledges the fact that a lot of people think .NET is a legal minefield.

<comment><USER4> Nonsense. Listen to what de Icaza says:

"Microsoft has shot the .NET ecosystem in the foot because of the constant threat of patent infringement that they have cast on the ecosystem"

He notably did NOT say:

"RMS has shot the .NET ecosystem in the foot because of the fears of patent infringement that he has cast on the ecosystem."

De Icaza is clearly and explicitly laying blame at Microsoft's feet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Found the text of the article here: <http://slated.org/does_windows_cost_microsoft_opportunities>

<comment><USER8> That site won't show me the article. Instead, it shows me a page complaining about ISPs that use something called "Webwise", and tells me to change ISPs if I want to see the site.

PS: my ISP is not using Webwise.

<comment><USER9> I also get that message. That's kind of lame. My ISP has said they are considering Webwise but are not currently using it, otherwise I'd be on a different ISP. But that's none of that website's business, what a bunch of dicks.

<comment><USER10> Given that Webwise replaces original ads with ISP's ads, and the website gets exactly nada from any clicks, I'd say that it is pretty much website's business.

<comment><USER9> I didn't know that was part of what it did. I still think that's a bit of a stupid way of dealing with it (especially as my ISP isn't even using Webwise!) but I can understand why they're concerned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> IT Wire writes about it here - apparently, SD Times has removed the article.

[http://www.itwire.com/opinion-and-analysis/open- sauce/37880-...](http://www.itwire.com/opinion-and-analysis/open- sauce/37880-microsoft-has-shot-net-ecosystem-in-foot-de-icaza)

</comment><comment><USER11> It's not surprising at all. Now that MS can point to Sun and say Java is doomed (it's not, but they say whatever is convenient for them), why would anyone think they would refrain themselves from taking the opportunity to prevent the clueless companies they managed to scare away from Java from going Mono instead of going Windows?

</comment><comment><USER12> Sorry, but acting as if Microsoft is really interested in cross-platform anything, and then being surprised when they're not, is similar to snuggling with tigers (while your friends are very worried, asking you to get out of the lair), and then being shocked after the tiger starts to eat your legs.

</comment><comment><USER13> _".NET creates value from a fantastic IDE, great mainstream languages, and well-executed technologies like Silverlight, LINQ and the DLR [Dynamic Language Runtime]."_

Silverlight is well executed? Is there any real uptake with the DLR outside Silverlight? I think the answer to both is no, can anyone point to evidence otherwise?

<comment><USER14> I also wonder what "fantastic IDE" he is referring to. I constantly hear people talk about visual studio being great but I don't believe they have ever stepped outside their world to try some of the Java IDEs like IntelliJ IDEA.

<comment><AUTHOR> I also wondered the same thing. Visual Studio is so bad, you have to actually buy another piece of software (<http://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/>) for it to start approaching "good", but it's still not close to "fantastic".

<comment><USER15> Eh, it's not subpar either. I purposely didn't get Resharper because I hate how intrusive it is. TestDriven.NET and ViEmu make VS2008 a passable IDE IMO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Miguel posted the response/correction to this article - <http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2010/Mar-25.html>

</comment><comment><USER17> Why is he so surprised by classic M$ behavior ? Everyone knew this would happen when .Net was first hyped back in 2000. It's possible that M$ marketing sold him some BS story on the side and/or piled on some cash that clouded his judgment.

If you dance to the tune, you must pay the piper ...

<comment><USER18> Are you seriously suggesting that a bribe would cause a developer of Miguel's caliber to devote nearly a decade of his life to building something like Mono?

<comment><USER19> The ability of the human mind to rationalize anything if the rewards are great enough has been proven time and again. If you give someone enough incentive, and ease them into it slowly, a person will be able to justify anything to themselves.

The more they're challenged, the more justifications and rationalizations they'll come up with to defend their choices, and the more entrenched they'll be in their new position.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> More context for the actual quote, from Miguel de Icaza's own blog:

<http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2010/Mar-25.html></comment>


W64devkit: A Portable C and C++ Development Kit for Windows - <AUTHOR> https://nullprogram.com/blog/2020/05/15/ <comment><USER2> _My unusual application of Docker here is no exception. Most software builds are needlessly complicated and fragile, especially Autoconf-based builds. Ironically, the worst configure scripts I've dealt with come from GNU projects. They waste time doing useless checks ("Does your compiler define size_t?") then produce a build that doesn't work anyway because you're doing something slightly unusual. Worst of all, despite my best efforts, the build will be contaminated by the state of the system doing the build._

Completely agree, Autoconf needs to die. C++ builds don't _need_ to be complex and fragile, even if many environments are supported. Just use a minimal CMake build and resist the urge to implement "clever" things in it.

<comment><USER3> If you do only minimal things, you will have fragile builds. The hacks are there not because people like adding complex code for no reason, but they're scars from broken builds.

For example, requirements for what has to be static and what dynamic are different on Linux (distros want unbundling) and macOS and Windows (you can link to handful of things that ship with the OS). macOS is especially annoying, because if you're not careful, you'll link dynamically to homebrew's non-permanent locations. `find_package` doesn't do the right thing without clever non-minimal things around it.

<comment><USER4> The problem is, autoconf does a terrible job of supporting Windows, and actively rejects patches which would improve things (for example, it does very badly with spaces in filenames, which are common in Windows, for example "Program Files" and "My Documents")

<comment><USER5> "My Documents" are called "Documents". You can also install your application into user directory, something like "C:\Users\Vladimir\AppData\Local\YourApplication", so no spaces necessary unless user name contains spaces (not sure if it's even possible).

I'm not claiming that spaces should not be supported, but you can live without them.

<comment><USER6> It's shame that it still needs workaround in 2020.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've been eyeing off the new zig compiler for making portable binaries. I'm tempted to set it up for cross-compiling a native nodejs library I develop. The work Andrew Kelley has done to make zig cross compile is phenomenal.

[https://andrewkelley.me/post/zig-cc-powerful-drop-in- replace...](https://andrewkelley.me/post/zig-cc-powerful-drop-in-replacement- gcc-clang.html)

<comment><USER8> Don't you need C++ for native node nodejs libraries?

<comment><USER7> Nah the napi API is pure C:

[https://nodejs.org/api/n-api.html](https://nodejs.org/api/n-api.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Advice to young devs: If you don't have a good professional reason why you absolutely need to use gnu tools on windows, and you have no technical reason not to use Visual Studio, use Visual Studio. It's good enough, and for me, even good.

<comment><USER10> Your advice would have more weight if you provided some arguments. GNU tools are also good enough, and this kit seems like a lot easier way to get started with your C lab exercise than installing Visual Studio and getting lost in it.

I dislike Visual Studio because to set things up you have to compare online screenshots to your settings and click around multiple tabs of configurations. In the end you (as beginner) don't know what libraries get included and if it will work on another computer. GNU tools are text-driven, so easier to replicate and to reason about.

<comment><USER11> The GNU tools are not fully compatible with the Windows ABI and they don't support some important Windows features. There are great reasons to use the GNU tools, like compiling unix programs that do not otherwise target Windows.

But you are swimming upstream if you use the GNU tools for general Windows development. Windows is a complex, integrated system that has evolved over a long period of time and is very different from unix-like operating systems. The peculiarities that exist in MSVC and associated tools are not just the whimsies of Microsoft devdiv engineers and product managers, but often tie in to operating system functionality. If you try to develop Windows applications with mingw, you will eventually hit weird problems and errors that simply would not exist if you used Microsoft's toolchain.

If you want an alternative to Microsoft's compiler, then consider llvm, which is aiming for full ABI compatibility and even produces PDBs (though I'm skeptical that they're as complete as the ones generated by Microsoft's tools). But the compatibility is incomplete, so ymmv.

<comment><USER12> I wonder how long this stays true though.

Microsoft seems to aim for deep integration of Linux in Windows per WSL. They even showcased that they are working on Wayland support for WSL, which would enable using Linux GUI applications directly on Windows.

We may soon get at a point where Linux applications feel as native on Windows as native Windows applications (which use quite a variety of toolkits anyway), as the integration deepens.

Now WSL still uses larger distribution images. But very little holds them from supporting thin Linux images with just the necessary dependencies that launches in Windows as any other application.

Using LLVM for ABI compat is a good tip though!

<comment><USER13> WSL is more a solution for users that want to have Linux software on Windows. It's not a solution for developers that want to target Windows, which is what I take this thread to be about.

I don't know if it will ever come with a vanilla Windows Home edition install but somehow I doubt that.

<comment><USER14> WSL is available on Home (including WSL2, you just don't get access to all of hyper-v even if it's running).

<comment><USER13> Sorry if I was unclear, I meant as in "installed by default" on a user's machine.

<comment><USER12> Not yet, but I think it is very likely that in the future installing a Linux distribution from the store will automatically install/enable WSL. Micro- distributions with a specific applications are only a small step from there.

I don't see what they have to lose. Windows is still used widely in business. But their lock-in has drastically reduced with the rise of iOS, Android, and web apps. Making Windows more attractive as a platform for developers to deploy applications, even if it is through the WSL subsystem will make Windows as a platform more competitive to these other ecosystems.

I am currently writing scientific software. But we have stopped building Windows versions, since these programs work great with WSL and it is far less effort than building these applications separately with Visual C++.

<comment><USER13> I write software that's used by human beings in businesses and _building_ for Windows is trivial compared to maintaining additional docs and training material for managing a WSL install on users machines.

I'm currently in a weird spot with the software I distribute because the majority of the users "know enough to be dangerous" but aren't software engineers/IT professionals. We want them running code and using Linux like a pro, but there's a lot of training/documentation overhead just for our *nix builds and the friction to getting that up and running for WSL is daunting.

Luckily MS understands B2B native more than anyone else so I'm hopeful they'll have a solution eventually, but I'm not holding my breath until then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> My biggest problem with gcc for Windows is that libstdc++ does not support threads. There is a workaround with a pthread compatibility layer but that is just horrible and awful. I can't bring myself to do that.

This has been an open issue for literally years now. But apparently nobody cares enough to fix it.

<comment><USER16> My understanding is that while pthreads don't work, c++11 threads are supported.

<comment><USER15> If only that were so! At least up to gcc version 9.3 it does not work. I will try gcc 10 soonish but I don't have high hopes.

The whole reason I installed a cross compiler to Windows is so I could cross compile some search engine code I wrote that uses C++ threads. But if you have a copy of the header and run-time files from Visual Studio (there is a free edition of that now) you can actually use clang to cross compile for Windows from Linux just fine, including C++ threads.

<comment><USER17> gcc on Windows uses winpthreads for C++11 threads, which works just fine (it automatically links with libwinpthread)... I can basically use the same threading code for all platforms (except the stuff that is necessarily platform dependent and therefore not part of C++11). I should note that I use msys2. So I'm wondering what you are missing?

That being said, I often use my own STL like mutex class which wraps SRWLock on Window and pthtead_mutex_t on Linux/macOS.

<comment><USER15> The reason (for me) to use msys in the first place would be so I can create binaries that do not depend on obscure DLLs like winpthread. If depending on 3rd party DLLs was no problem, I could have used Cygwin.

Also, as I heard it, winpthread combines the warts of windows threads with the warts of pthreads, doing neither justice.

<comment><USER17> You can link both libstdc++ and libwinpthread statically if you want. Both libs come with msys2, so I wouldn't really call them obscure third-party DLLs... In practice, threading is not a problem at all with gcc on Windows. I agree, however, that libwinpthread is not the most efficient implementation (that's why I roll my own), but for most purposes it's good enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Note that it's "portable" in the Windows sense, i.e. you can unzip it and it should work. It has nothing to do with cross-platform portability.

<comment><USER19> Portable in a sense of have it on a flash-stick in your pocket, all working without need to install.

I once created such a pocket-development setup, throwing in Fossil [0] for version control and project tracking, Notepad2 (notepad2-mod) [1,2] for editor. Actually, Git can also be set up for pocket, which then brings the whole MinGW for this.

I wanted to fit Geany [3] for more like IDE experience. It's also Scintilla based, but needed GTK, so I chose not to bother back then.

Android NDK can be set up this way too. It packs LLVM, so here it is another capable compiler to do the lab-work.

Just learn to program in portable C way, that is know the platform-specific ways to do certain things (threads, network) and #ifdef it properly. However this is a whole other story about how this sort of portability could be handled.

[0] [http://fossil-scm.org](http://fossil-scm.org)

[1] [https://xhmikosr.github.io/notepad2-mod/](https://xhmikosr.github.io/notepad2-mod/)

[2] [http://www.flos-freeware.ch/notepad2.html](http://www.flos- freeware.ch/notepad2.html)

[3] [http://geany.org](http://geany.org)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Regarding msys2, for those who use GitHub the big news is that since 7 days msys2 is by default installed on the windows-latest target of GitHub actions: [https://github.com/actions/virtual- environments/commit/c6114...](https://github.com/actions/virtual- environments/commit/c61145f2de073f08e8ce5316e31cdf2a5e0ddaa5)

I'm doing all local development on Linux and since msys2 is there by default getting the windows compile done is a bliss. Just need to bring msys2 to your path and all the rest (git, g++, linking, etc) is the same as in your Linux env. E.g. this is my prefix for the cross-build [https://gist.github.com/dominicletz/5e50c49aa1bf30d2485f5bec...](https://gist.github.com/dominicletz/5e50c49aa1bf30d2485f5bece177c82f)

<comment><USER21> This has been the case for a long time on Appveyor which was is one of the reasons we stick to it for CI. Do you happen to have experience with it? I'm wondering if and why we should switch to github actions, for the repositories we have on github anyway.

<comment><USER20> Haven't tried Appveyor so can't compare experience. I'm a travis convert came for Windows with my open source project. Just glancing at the Appveyor pricing chart I guess my open source project would only get one parallel job on Appveyor while on GitHub Actions it's unlimited.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Note that this kit is using MinGW. That's not necessarily a bad thing but comes with all of the caveats you can read about. I wish the author mentioned it because it should definitely be a choice you make deliberately.

</comment><comment><USER22> In the same vein I've been using [https://github.com/mstorsjo/llvm- mingw](https://github.com/mstorsjo/llvm-mingw) \+ lld + cmake + ninja on windows for over a year with great success, dev experience is much better than with MSVC.

</comment><comment> seventh-chord If you install visual studio, and then copy together all the files it adds to %PATH%, %INCLUDE% and %LIB%, and create a .bat script to set environment variables to point to your copies of these files you get a fully portable first-class compiler for windows with needed headers and libraries, zipped up to around 75 mB. Add remedybg as a debugger, and your editor of choice, and you never have to touch visual studio again.

<comment><USER23> Or you could just get the "build tools":

[https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/downloads/#build-tools- fo...](https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/downloads/#build-tools-for-visual- studio-2019)

<comment> seventh-chord Which you need the visual studio installer for, which only works half of the time. Just to check if it still is as bad as last I tried, I downloaded the build tools and started the installer. Currently downloading 1 GB of data...

Edit: To nobodies surprise, the installer still doesn't work. The command line shortcuts it installs fail to properly set up the path. At least it looks like they are trying to print a sensible error message in the command prompt now though. Still not quite sure how they manage to fail this badly though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Mmmh Docker: It's still a problem to run Docker and VMware Workstation peacefully in parallel on Windows. The one prefers Hyper-V, the other the opposite:

[https://www.kauffmann.nl/2019/03/04/how-to-install-docker- on...](https://www.kauffmann.nl/2019/03/04/how-to-install-docker-on- windows-10-without-hyper-v/)

[https://blogs.vmware.com/workstation/2020/01/vmware- workstat...](https://blogs.vmware.com/workstation/2020/01/vmware-workstation- tech-preview-20h1.html)

This has to change first (the links giving some kind of hope).

<comment><USER25> If you don't want Hyper-V, you can run easily run docker in virtualbox with boot2docker, using docker-machine. Or you can setup a docker linux vm in vmware.

<comment><USER26> >docker in virtualbox with boot2docker

It comes packaged as Docker Toolbox.

<comment><USER25> It's legacy though. But I also notice that docker-machine isn't really updated anymore.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> [https://github.com/libgit2/libgit2/pull/5507](https://github.com/libgit2/libgit2/pull/5507) I think git will get a stand alone git command line client in the future with no need for perl and such

</comment><comment> heresie-dabord For the OP, many projects are a "mess" that don't agree with his opinions. "bash is a mess, git is a mess, cygwin feels wrong..."

And M-Windows is a pristine example of orderly genius?

I support his right to his opinions. But here he is, running Docker and a pile of opinions to build himself a portable C&C++ env on M-Windows. (To use gcc, no less.)

Software in general is a mess. But that doesn't prevent great tools from being developed. There's a reason for the success of GNU and FOSS.

<comment><USER8> What is M-Windows?

<comment> heresie-dabord You are probably being facetious about this facetious short-form for the Redmond product.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Worth pointing out that this is a dockerfile, and not something you can just unzip-and-run on Windows.

<comment><USER28> The 5th sentence in the linked article is:

> _For most users, the value is in the 78MiB .zip available in the "Releases" > on GitHub._

immediately followed by:

> _It's "portable" in that there's no installation. Just unzip it and start > using it in place._</comment></comment>


Announcing Xamarin 2.0 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.xamarin.com/announcing-xamarin-2.0/

<comment><USER2> I have mixed feeling about this. I have a current Mono for Android Profession subscription and use the Visual Studio integration a lot. My subscription is due for renewal next month and if I want to continue to use VS with Xamarin 2.0 then I have to renew at the Business edition level. I paid for my sub out of my own pocket because I liked the technology so much, but $399 for the pro version last year was a stretch and I just can't justify $1k to renew. Xamarin Studio might be superb, but I've been using VS since 1995 and I really don't need to learn another new IDE right now.

Any comments from Miguel or anyone from Xamarin?

That said, the Indie edition is something that a lot or people were asking for and the price is attractive. The components look good too. I think its going to be a big success.

Edit: See Nat Friedman's response below [1]. Existing Pro subscribers are automatically upgraded to Business and can renew at their existing renewal price. This is described in the FAQ [2] which I didn't read far enough down.

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5250922>

[2] <http://xamarin.com/xamarin-2.0-faq>

<comment><USER3> As an existing Professional customer you are automatically upgraded to Business edition and can renew at you existing renewal price (which is $249 for you).

Hope that helps :-)

<comment><USER4> How long will renewals be this cheap, just the first time around?

<comment><USER3> We don't have an end date.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Periodic reminder to the Linux and free software community of the damage they made with their ideology wars against the Mono environment. Mono is now the most popular game and one of the most popular app development environments. :-)

Kudos to Miguel and the rest of the Xamarin team, the update looks amazing.

<comment><USER6> > Periodic reminder to the Linux and free software community of the damage > they made with their ideology wars against the Mono environment

What damage, exactly? I don't think Linux adoption is in any way harmed by the removal of all Mono packages from the default installs of several distros.

> Mono is now the most popular game and one of the most popular app > development environments

I find that a bit hard to believe unless you are talking about cross-platform mobile game development.

<comment><USER7> I guess he means Unity which uses Mono. But there are others as well like MonoGame which is the de facto XNA successor (and its natural evolution) and Playstation Mobile that uses Mono.

edit: Would be quite awesome if they somehow incorporated the Mono runtime on the new Playstation as well for indie development. Here's for wishful thinking!

<comment><USER8> I think a lot of NaCl games are also written in MONO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have been working with the beta and am extremely pleased. I think people will get very excited over the VS integration for iOS but I think the component store is going to be one of the big winners here.

The MonoDevelop rewrite (Xamarin Studio) also has a clean, fresh and fast feel to it. I cannot say that X is empirically faster or better but the experience does feel better overall.

I think they are heading in the right direction here and the holy grail for breaking strongly into the enterprise may be the ability to build for iOS without the need for a Mac. It is not there yet but you can see the direction they are going and how that will likely come to pass at some point.

<comment><USER9> You will generally speaking always need a Mac for building.. but I could see a time where they have a Mac build farm and it is just part of the service offered.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Any news on building apps with F#? These two articles look like a great start, but it would be nice if there was a more official/streamlined way to do it.

<http://7sharpnine.com/posts/monotouch-and-fsharp-part-i/> <http://7sharpnine.com//posts/monotouch-and-fsharp-part-ii/>

I'm still waiting for part 3 if Dave is reading :-)

<comment><USER11> We are actively working on F# support for our products.

We have built on the great work that the F# community has done and will be shipping it in future versions of the product.

We are looking at a beat of our F# support for March.

<comment><USER10> Great news! I'd better stop reading all those haskell books and start brushing up on F# 3.0 then I guess :-)

<comment><USER12> Haskell books will certainly not hurt. You won't need monads right away and you won't feel lacking certain Haskell powers if you don't read RWH right away, but in the long run, it will make F# more enjoyable. Of course OCaml books, ML books, and Clojure books will always help too, as will Scala ones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Seems awesome. I wonder how they made it possible to have an iOS simulator in their Visual Studio plug-in. Apparently it will be possible to develop native iOS / Android apps written in C# from Visual Studio and I'm guessing from Windows.

I have much respect for Miguel and the other guys at Xamarin. They work on some great stuff, I think C# has a great future for mobile development because of all the work these guys have done.

<comment><USER14> From [http://docs.xamarin.com/guides/ios/getting_started/installat...](http://docs.xamarin.com/guides/ios/getting_started/installation/windows#24-limitations)

"No iOS simulator on Windows. The iOS Simulator runs on Mac OS X, so it's necessary to switch to the Mac's screen when testing on the simulator."

<comment><USER15> _Our new Business edition, at $999, now includes iOS support for Visual Studio developers._

I guess you will be able to use a device from Windows, or something like that. Otherwise it won't make sense to provide iOS support for VS.

Correction - you will need a Mac for the final build of the product. VS will connect through network to this Mac ... Not sure if it makes more sense to just use VS as a glorified C# editor. I suppose if you are a hard core VS user it will be easier to do your development from VS.

<comment><USER16> Using VS would be a huge plus. You don't have to buy a bunch of pricey macs, just 1. You don't have to retrain C# coders to use a Mac. You can use ReSharper! You can open two code windows side by side, something monodevelop cannot do (not sure about Xamarin Studio as I am still waiting on the download). VS integration with Team Foundation is much better than git-tf, so if your company is already using Team Foundation you can tack on iOS development/ports with out much trouble. There are a lot of reasons it makes sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Great work, this is really cool. A couple of thoughts, idly:

\- 'Xamarin Studio' just a new coat of paint on monodevelop, but it has some nice things in this version; new ui, the autocomplete especially is _vastly_ improved.

\- Seems a bit laggy on my mac mini for some reason, which is a bit disappointing, but works fine on my imac. Both mountain lion, so who knows?

\- _Still_ no PCL's for macs. :( _sigh_ (yes, you still need to have a separate project for each platform, which includes all the same files).

<comment><USER18> Are they contributing changes back to MonoDevelop?

<comment><USER19> Yes. <https://github.com/mono/monodevelop/commits/master>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm curious how it integrates Mono runtime into a "native ARM executable". The whole runtime must be really big. When building the App, does it only integrates the parts required to support the App, or does it integrate all?

The other question is that, when running on iOS, is it the .NET IL running on top of the runtime, or C# code is compiled into native binary code that can be directly executed on CPU? I'm trying to figure out if there's something like a micro VM running.

<comment><USER17> Dunno, but the android ones are pretty big. A simple 'hello world' view:

        ls -sl ~/Desktop/HelloWorld.apk
        10144 -rw-r--r--  1 doug  core  5191787 20 Feb 23:46 /Users/doug/Desktop/HelloWorld.apk

<comment><USER20> Most Apps are not as simple as a "hello world" view. My guess is that, the getting-started pack is large but when you add more things into it, it doesn't increase that much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> As an indie developer who recently bought the full priced package so that he could start testing on real devices: argh. As a developer that knows C# and wants to make iOS apps: awesome.

I haven't had a chance to download it and try it out yet, but Xamarin Studio looks amazing. I've long thought that MonoDevelop has a very solid core but little polish- it looks like Studio adds that polish.

<comment><USER22> From the FAQs, if this helps.

"Customers that purchased within the past 90 days may request a partial refund for the price difference between their purchase price and Indie. If you choose to make this downgrade, you will lose access to many great Xamarin Business features you already enjoy, including Visual Studio and email-based support."

<comment><USER23> That pricing is much cheaper than a full $999 price tag and is entitled to $249 upgrades for future, so it seems to be a bargain.

<comment><USER24> I just bought a license a few months ago. I'd rather keep the business license and the old renewal cost as well over a refund. It would be silly not to with the additional features if one wishes to keep using C# for long term cross- platform development.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This looks amazing. I think in many ways Xamarin has out-done Microsoft here. I'm not sure if Xamarin Studio is more featureful than Visual Studio (VS went over the "overly complex" hill for me after 6.x), but it looks a lot cleaner and easier to get into.

Anyone know if debugging C/C++ code on Mac is still unsupported as it is in MonoDevelop 3.0?

<comment><USER9> I'm surprised you have that opinion on VS.. the addition of easy add-on installs and nuget packages in 2010-2012 are pretty nice. I found the VS6 UI's decent, but since I do most of my work in web based apps, it never cut it there. These days about half my time is in VS/C# and the other half in WebStorm/NodeJS. I also think web apps have a lot of milage and in some cases more to offer depending on what you are wanting to accomplish.

 I am glad that Xamarin has a viable business model, and wish them all the success in the world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is great and looks very interesting. First question - what happened to the Windows Phone 8 support? Won't we be able to develop Windows Phone applications using Xamarin?

It says on <http://xamarin.com/Windows> that Xamarin does support all three platforms, but I don't see anything about the Xamarin studio there.

<comment><USER11> While we make our cross platform libraries like Xamarin.Mobile run on all platforms, including Windows, we do not actually provide an IDE for Windows Phone apps.

Microsoft already provides a complete and capable product for that space.

<comment><USER27> > Microsoft already provides a complete and capable product for that space.

Not on OS X.

<comment><USER19> You raise an interesting point...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> What does it mean with "you cannot P/Invoke 3rd-party library"? Does this mean that Xamarin Free edition is limited to the scope of iOS basic SDK and not 3rd-party Obj-C library out there?

Or does this include some of the iOS extended library (if any?) from Apple?

Sorry if this is a dumb question, I'm not quite familiar with iOS ecosystems.

<comment><USER19> It just means that the Starter Edition (aka the free version) does not allow P/Invoking into C libraries.

You can still use all of Apple's APIs and bindings for third-party Objective-C libraries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> You can actually use the Starter Edition to publish a small application. Wow! This will increase the adoption of Xamarin ...

</comment><comment><USER29> I've mostly worked on the server side of things for the last few years but last year I decided to dip into mobile. I felt disappointed after trying MonoDevelop as I found a lot of the things I had really appreciated in server development missing or inadequate. Things like a proper package manager and easy integration with CI servers. I just got NuGet to work last month, after trying it infrequently over a couple of months. xbuild, I never got to work properly, sure I was able to run unit tests inside MonoDevelop but my expectations were a bit higher.

Meanwhile, over in Javaville, I can do just about anything Android related my heart desires with Maven and even CocoaPods in its infancy was a better experience than NuGet. Just my 2 cents.

</comment><comment><USER30> Ars review here: [http://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2013/02/xamari...](http://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2013/02/xamarin-2-0-reviewed-ios-development-finally-comes-to- visual-studio/2/)

</comment><comment><USER31> This looks very nice, in particular the free version. I would never consider trying a runtime that can expire, even for experimenting.

They still don't have a Linux version though, which is disappointing, since I can't try it.

<comment><USER32> True, but judging from Miguel's stance on the use of Linux for a desktop OS, I doubt we'll be seeing a Linux port of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> While C# looks like a great language, and I'm looking forward to playing with this, does Xamarin really allow you to share that much code between platforms?

In my experience, 75% of my mobile app code tends to be either working with platform-specific APIs or just quite trivial. Is the potential for code reuse high enough to justify the extra layer of stuff to understand (and potentially break)?

Edit: I can see how being able to use C# is a plus for some people, I guess I'm just slightly skeptical of the cross-platform selling point.

<comment><USER7> Here are two developers that have shared some stats on code reuse:

iCircuit [http://praeclarum.org/post/42378027611/icircuit-code- reuse-p...](http://praeclarum.org/post/42378027611/icircuit-code-reuse-part- cinq)

TouchDraw <http://lipsky.me/blog/2012/9/11/touchdraw-code-reuse-updated>

<comment><USER33> Ahh, hard stats vs. gut instinct. That's interesting, thanks. I'd still be concerned that dealing with the differences between native APIs may take up an amount of time not reflected by a LOC count, but I'm more tempted to give it a try...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I am a bit ambivalent - on one side, as I think about new product ideas that will naturally be multiplaform, something like this is very appealing in theory, but my experience tells me that the lowest-common-denominator approach has almost always failed.

I wonder how folks are thinking about that problem - i.e., if you are starting a new app from scratch - even if you are doing iOS only initially - do you go objective-c or xamarin/c# ?

it's quite hard to make an educated decision.

any thoughts?

<comment><USER11> We do not actually provide a lowest-common-denominator.

It is simpler to think of Xamarin as providing you with:

* C# language on iOS, Android, Mac * 1:1 API bindings to whatever is native on a given platform. On iOS, the CocoaTouch APIs, on Android, the Android APIs, on Mac the Cocoa/CoreFoundation-based APIs.

From this basic setup, you can already see that you wont get code that will run on all platforms. You will need to split your code into cross-platform code (database access, web services, xml, json parsing, offline caches, authentication) and things that are UI-specific (Android activities, Android widgets, iOS View Controllers, and so on).

<comment><USER35> >We do not actually provide a lowest-common-denominator.

This actually is the reason I keep away from Xamarin, and I guess I'm not alone...

I think that there is a room for having a cross-platform lowest-common- denominator, including UI, File system, Networking, etc... with ability to dive into platform specific details when needed.

<comment><USER36> Nothing stops you from treating Xamarin as one.

But it also supports the full experience for each platform.

<comment><USER35> You can't treat Xamarin as one... e.g. you can't write a simple calculator UI in a cross-platform way - You would have to code the UI part separately for iOS and Android.

At least, that's my understanding and OP (Miguel) confirms it. And I guess your mileage won't vary in this aspect ;)

Although, Xamarin.Mobile is a step in the right direction, as commented here.

<comment><USER36> > _You can't treat Xamarin as one... e.g. you can't write a simple calculator > UI in a cross-platform way - You would have to code the UI part separately > for iOS and Android._

Yes, but they do offer a "base" abstraction layer besides the C# libraries, that includes stuff like GPS access, accelerometers, etc.

As for the UI part, one could use a Webkit View as the view, and link the various heavy actions to C# code. For something like a common denominator UI, for a simple calculator or some form based stuff, it would be perfectly fine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Does this mean that MonoDevelop is now officially dead?

<comment><USER19> No, it's still very much alive and kicking: <https://github.com/mono/monodevelop/commits/master>

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> This is great work.

Working with monodevelop was a pain in MacOS.

Downloading it now, but from the sales page alone they got me.

Good work!

</comment><comment><USER39> This is a pretty cool deal; nice to see an open-source powered company that has found a self-supporting niche.

It will be interesting to see how they strike a balance between making money and keeping things (like Mono.Mac, MonoDevelop, etc.) open... and if they are able to build a community of outside contributors around the open-source parts of their solution(s).

<comment><USER40> I was wondering about this. Are they planning to keep some part open source? I feel like they ditched that entire idea...

<comment><USER19> MonoDevelop, MonoMac, and Mono itself are still all open source.

<http://github.com/mono/monodevelop>

<http://github.com/mono/monomac>

<http://github.com/mono/maccore>

<http://github.com/mono/mono>

Xamarin also has a number of open source modules on github: <https://github.com/xamarin>

<comment><USER39> It would be nice to see a blog post or two on the mile-high long-term etc. goals Xamarin has for the open source aspects of their tech... or perhaps a pointer to any existing summary. As you've pointed out, Xamarin is rather quietly contributing a lot; it would be great to have a place to point the non-developers to that explained this as well.

<comment><USER11> Do you mind emailing me a list of questions, to make sure I address all of them?

My blogging has gone down, due to twitter mostly, but this is a good chance to talk about our open source work.

Cheers! Miguel

<comment><USER40> That would be really great. Me being skeptical pays off after all. This is why HN is so great.

I look forward to your blog post.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I'm been pretty excited about Xamarin for quite some time, but today I'm not as excited.

The new Studio looks great, but there isn't a Linux version. This makes me very, very sad.

The one thing that could make me very happy, however, is if they target the Ubuntu mobile/touch SDK in the future. Wonder if this is on the horizon?

<comment><USER19> If the Ubuntu mobile/touch devices become popular, I have no doubt that we'll come out with a product for writing Ubuntu mobile apps as well.

We're always looking into supporting other mobile platforms.

We've just pushed all of our MonoDevelop source code to public github and I'm sure that the Ubuntu packagers will be packaging it for Ubuntu very soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Bummer, Mac OS 10.7.x required.

(Edit: I've been reluctant to upgrade from Snow Leopard, but maybe I should reevaluate.)

<comment><AUTHOR> I held out for a really long time on 10.6 but upgraded a few months ago after buying a new machine and it was a lot less painful than I'd imagined - worth a go, though, as always with OS X, a fresh install may ultimately be less painful than upgrading, even if it's time consuming.

<comment><USER42> Actually, my old Intel iMac at home can't even run Lion!

The main reason I always wait to upgrade is for kinks to be worked out in OS X ports of mainly-GNU/Linux software.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> It seems that you will now charge for Mac only development via XamerinStudio? Is that correct? At least, when I went to clarify the multi-buy discount for Indy, I saw to my utter horror that Xamarin.Mac is an included option at $299. So, what does that mean to Mac only Developers? Are we now forever restricted to a 32kb app with no third party P/Invokes too? I'm certainly not ever in 1,000,000 years ever giving you a penny for the Mac target. I think this is an extremely worrying move on Xamerin's part and if we really do have to buy a subscription to get continued support, I really do feel betrayed. I mean, come on, Apple have charged $5 for XCode for a short period for as long as it has existed. And I can open it now and create an app for free. I really don't understand this move. I'm hoping I've get the wrong idea and Miguel (et al) will correct me.

</comment><comment><USER44> When starting out with mobile apps i always wonder if it pays off to invest heavily in something like this (i love C#) or put my money on web-tech based apps especially if looking at it mid/long term. I know web-tech isnt there yet, but its not far off. What do you think ?

</comment><comment><USER45> Hah, I knew I should've pulled the trigger on buying MonoTouch last week!

Oh well, at least I can do some testing on a real device without buying anything for the moment.

From looking at the comparison chart on <https://store.xamarin.com/> , the LLVM optimising compiler only seems to be available for Business or above. What does this mean in practice?

</comment><comment><USER46> If I have a team (a "team" of me +2, don't think too big) of coders proficient in both C# and C++, what advantages would using Xamarin bring over having the common/cross-platform code in c++ (objective c++, ok...) and using the platform specific languages and tools for the UI and whatever else ends up being platform specific? (besides C# being a much nicer language, of course)

<comment><USER47> There are tons of sdks and libraries that you can use with C# / .net. To name just a small few that I have used: Stripe's .net sdk, parse.com's sdk, amazon's sdk for .net... the list goes on and on. Pull their dlls in and just use them. It makes a cinch of hooking into other services.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Looks interesting but the prices are about equivalent to MSDN subscriptions. Does this make financial sense for most C# developers?

</comment><comment><USER49> The activation stage of the download isn't working for me. Servers appear to be hosed.

</comment><comment><USER50> So does this version support building native OS-X apps, aka uses the cocoa UI elements instead of gtk# or something similar? I played with this a while back and I couldn't get the UI to look native at all, it was quite disappointing.

</comment><comment><USER51> Getting 500 error on download page, is there any mirror for dmg file ? :)

<comment><USER52> Hi,

Our servers buckled a little bit under the load. We load-tested, but missed a piece of infrastructure in the chaos. We've since beefed up that last piece of infrastructure, and you should be all set now to use the download form at <http://xamarin.com/download>. If you're still having trouble, contact our support at firstname.lastname@example.com. Cheers!

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> It's a shame that Linux support at Xamarin is obviously dropped in many places, so no Mono development for me. :(

</comment><comment><USER20> The downloading seems to be halted on my Mac. I'm using a case-sensitive partition. Does this matter?

</comment><comment><USER54> Is anyone else encountering errors with the installation? I'm on a Mac 10.8.2

</comment><comment><USER55> How to add database addin to xamarin studio to get database access ?

<comment><USER56> You may want to check out something like SQLite-Net: <https://github.com/praeclarum/sqlite-net>

Really easy to setup and get up and running!</comment></comment>


Lessons from HN comments - <AUTHOR> https://mailchi.mp/945fb899bde7/lessons-of-hn <comment><USER2> Is it just me? I can't find anything to click to subscribe.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's weird, I see some people subscribed already so it should work. (creator here)

Is someone else experiencing issues?

<comment><USER2> Here's what I see:

[http://www.solipsys.co.uk/images/Lessons.png](http://www.solipsys.co.uk/images/Lessons.png)

Firefox on Ubuntu 14.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you have the JavaScript disabled for your browser? The form is loaded asynchronously with JavaScript.

<comment><USER2> Nope - JS is not disabled.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm very sorry for the inconvenience, I tried on Ubuntu 16 with Firefox and the form is loading, right now I don't see what else could do to find the issue.

Thanks for letting me know. In the future I plan a self hosted domain where I can do a simple form without any issues. I thought using Mailchimp campaign tool will make things easier, but looks like it didn't :) I hope not too many visitors are experiencing the issue.

If you just added the comment to let me know about the issue, thanks again. In case you wanted to subscribe just ping me and I'll add you manually. My e-mail is on my profile. Sorry again for the inconvenience.

<comment><USER2> Loads in Chrome, so I can register that way if I choose to. The report was to let you know that the form is not loading in some browser/OS combinations.

Cheers.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


NPM package is-odd installed almost 3M times this week - <AUTHOR> https://www.npmjs.com/package/is-odd <comment><USER2> Why isn't there a single "jmath" module that provides everything? Why a library for a single function to test for oddness that depends on a completely separate package for a single function to determine if something is a number?

What is the point of the javascript universe's almost pathological degree of granularity? It can't merely be about bandwidth or latency, since combining these into a single module would probably reduce redundant code (and LOC in total) and the number of requests made to just 1.

<comment><AUTHOR> There are many:

\- Math.js: [http://mathjs.org](http://mathjs.org)

\- Numbers.js: [https://numbers.github.io](https://numbers.github.io)

\- Numeric JavaScript: [http://www.numericjs.com](http://www.numericjs.com)

But the thing is, they are not suitable for such simple things like number % 2.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> An issue with these micro-packages is they introduce new semantics to your code, like throwing exceptions when vanilla JS would return NaN, etc. Once your code base grows, refactoring away from such packages is actually a lot more risky than it appears, and they tend to be sprinkled everywhere.

I've found it better to write my own "utils.js" functions, with clearly- defined semantics, that become part of the project strategy. This also has the benefit of reducing dependency churn and maintenance of package.json.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> A lot of modern JS developers must be very lazy if they need modules for such things like is-even, is-odd, is-number, etc.</comment>


Dogecoin now accounts for more transactions than any other cryptocurrency - <AUTHOR> http://bitinfocharts.com <comment><USER2> A significant portion of the commenters in this thread are asking why Dogecoin has any value at all, as if for the first time grappling with the abstraction of value. Dogecoin has value, like any currency, because a number of people believe it does. Cryptocurrency will have been worth its short-term weight in carbon dioxide and money laundering if, at a minimum, it illuminates the minds of a good number of people to the fundamental arbitrariness of economics and all the philosophical consequences it entails.

<comment><USER3> When it all comes crashing down is when they'll be illuminated.

<comment><USER4> By giving it value, they illuminate the absence of value in all of it. Think of it like performance art.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A few weeks ago, my mom heard about Bitcoin on the news, gave me a call. She wanted to mine BTC. When I explained that mining would not be a viable process considering the inherent difficulty and the age and type of her computer, she was disappointed. I showed her how to buy Bitcoins, how to make an offline paper wallet, and she spent a little money and now holds one BTC.

Once Doge popped up, I called my mom and told her she could mine! I set up her machine, and for a while she was pulling in a few thousand a day. Even with growing difficulty she's mining a few hundred a day. She's excited, and she's learned an absolute ton about cryptocurrencies because of Doge. She thinks the meme is cute, and she's been tipping people on Reddit, and giving away Doge in "real life" as well.

Bitcoin feels unaccessible to people like my mom. Most of the discussions that happen in the various Bitcoin communities occurs at a technological level that limits the kinds of participants involved. Since there are 100 BILLION Doge, it will always be affordable, joke or not, and with the kind community developing around it, it allows people like my mom to get involved and to learn some interesting things that will most likely impact her future.

My mom will hold on to her 1 BTC, sure, but she's _using_ her Doge. She bought a cool trilobite fossil on the dogemarket subreddit, and is thinking of putting up her hand knit scarves for sale.

When 60 year old folks who have never been interested in the intersections of technology and economy start using Reddit and mining and using cryptocurrency, there is something special happening.

<comment><USER6> Thanks this was actually a really fascinating anecdote which gives a pretty unique perspective on digital crypto-currencies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ok, help me out here: Dogecoin's first block was mined on 2013-12-06 and now the richest account has $846,935 USD. Is it really that easy?

Could I start an aarondfcoin? Is it all about getting the network effect to make a non-backed (fiat) currency actually worth something?

I was just so shocked to see that Dogecoin was actually worth _anything_.

<comment><USER8> The short answer is yes. The longer answer is that you also need virality. There are multiple coins released every day [1]. Most of these coins go nowhere.

Why are so many coins released? Quite simply, most coins are forks of Bitcoin/Litecoin/etc with minor tweaks. Occasionally, you get a truly new coin based on something new, but most simply tweak the coins per block, the difficulty re-targeting rate, the starting difficulty, the block time, etc. Coingen.io exemplifies how simple this is. Of course, there are exceptions, such as the upcoming Etherium [2], the first Turing complete cryptocurrency (as far as I know, at least).

Despite that, most coins basically fail. Sure, they receive hashing power, and some even get onto exchanges. Most of them, however, don't really go anywhere.

So, yes, it is relatively easy to create and launch a coin. It is a bit harder to launch a coin that makes it to an exchange. It is harder still to make one that also sticks around and stays in the public consciousness (such as dogecoin).

Finally, let's say you have a great idea for a new coin. The way some people previously got rich by creating a new coin was to premine the coin. Basically, one would mine the first x number of blocks, before releasing it. This still happens, but is now much more often frowned upon. So, to get rich off of creating a coin, you basically would need to premine a coin, and convince others that you had a good reason to premine it [3]. This absolutely still happens, but is becoming tougher to pull off.

So yes, you could create aarondfcoin. Yes, you could probably release it and get hashing power thrown at it. But, would you make money doing so? Well, that requires a bit more effort. Keep in mind that there are hundreds of attempted alt currencies for every dogecoin success.

That said, yes, there is still room for success here, but it usually requires more than just creating aarondfcoin. The virality aspect is the more important aspect, at the moment.

[1] See the bitcointalk announcement forum [https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=159.0](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=159.0)

[2] [http://ethereum.org/](http://ethereum.org/) and the whitepaper: [http://ethereum.org/ethereum.html](http://ethereum.org/ethereum.html)

[3] Yes, there are a still a number of ways to make money off of releasing a coin that doesn't involve premining (or appears not to involve premining), but that is a topic worthy of its own thread.

<comment><USER9> What is funny about premining critique for the altcoins is that Bitcoin is the most egregious example of premining, Satoshi in effect having premined 5 to 10 % of current coins. Sure, you may say at the time there was no choice but to keep hashing until others joined the party. Still the end effect is still the same - a large amount of BTC is controlled by an unknown entity.

Litecoin apparently was one of few altcoins to avoid premining that is everyone (who followed BTC forums that is) got off on equal footing.

<comment><USER10> > _What is funny about premining critique..._

To me the funny thing is there is enough consternation over this to have an official term for it.

Satoshi, whether a group or individual, invented Bitcoin and planted the seeds for its success against all odds. Now that it's huge everyone is regretting not getting in early, but I see no reason why the creators and early adopters don't deserve their spoils.

It's nice that Litecoin decided to start everyone on equal footing, but let's not fool ourselves: that's an adoption tactic not altruism. At the end of the day Litecoin is the most successful of the copycat digital currencies but it's still a copycat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Dogecoin is kind of the Redditcoin [0]. This might be one reason, why it is so heavily used. For reddit users, it probably easier to get started with doge than with bitcoin. Since it is seen as fun, (micro) transactions are casually thrown around [1].

[0] [http://www.reddit.com/r/dogetipbot/wiki/gettingstarted](http://www.reddit.com/r/dogetipbot/wiki/gettingstarted)

[1] [http://www.reddit.com/r/dogecoin/comments/1v8x3v/recently_st...](http://www.reddit.com/r/dogecoin/comments/1v8x3v/recently_struck_rich_mining_set_up_this_account/)

<comment><USER12> Cool.. Is there a service that let's me tip email addresses, twitter users etc? (Without registration first..)

<comment><USER13> Twitter - yes at least one [https://twitter.com/tipdoge](https://twitter.com/tipdoge), Email - I've seen rumblings, but not now I think.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is an absolutely unfounded assumption but one could think a large part of those transactions might be some sort of tips. I can confess I'm happy to have some supply of a very cheap currency that I can give to people for fun. I have no use for DOGE other than this, but my friends and I are enjoying it.

Pollution created through the mining of relatively worthless items can be an issue though.

<comment><USER15> This is absolutely the source of the transactions. When you consider that no other crypto currency has a mass appeal use at this point, it makes sense that the transactions would be higher for DOGE than any other. Conversely, The primary use of Bitcoin is value storage.

<comment><USER16> An alternative source of the transactions is dust (people sending tiny transactions as a way to increase the size of the blockchain - an attack on the currency).

See [http://www.reddit.com/r/dogecoin/comments/1tc7ul/serious_shi...](http://www.reddit.com/r/dogecoin/comments/1tc7ul/serious_shibes_we_have_a_dust_problem/)

<comment><USER15> [https://github.com/dogecoin/dogecoin/pull/52](https://github.com/dogecoin/dogecoin/pull/52)

That was fixed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> To everyone that dismisses this as a joke currency - how is it different from bitcoin?

<comment><USER18> How is Dogebook different than Facebook? I mean you can create an account in both, follow your friends, "like" stuff...etc. They are essentially the same so they must both be worth billions, right?

What makes bitcoin different is the network effect and the infrastructure - there are many people who think bitcoin is _the_ cryptocurrency and this is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Some day another cryptocurrency may overtake it but for now it's the one because people say it's the one.

<comment><USER19> Oh my god. I'm going to make Dogebook

<comment><USER20> I think Facebook already is mostly Dogebook.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think the transaction volume comes partly from Reddit tipping with tipbots (a beautiful aspect of the modern age).

But it's probably more from from the fact that some people are attacking the currency by sending massive volumes of micro-transactions. Many people have been receiving thousands of really tiny donations (off-reddit).

<comment><USER21> The 'dust' issue was resolved recently by changing the minimum transaction amount. AFAIK, this vulnerability affects many other alt coins that haven't had the masses of people looking at their implementations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is transactional volume, and although of course the transactions are pretty small keep in mind that the total transactions over the last 24h was $13 million which is still pretty impressive. (Bitcoin was $500m) - [http://bitinfocharts.com/](http://bitinfocharts.com/)

</comment><comment><USER23> I don't understand. Who is buying and selling Dogecoins? For what? Mining for fun is one thing, but why buy it with USD?

<comment><USER15> People tip other people Dogecoins on sites like Reddit. That's its main use and that's why there are so many transactions. Since the coin has a total supply of 100 billion coins vs 21 million for Bitcoin, you can easily tip someone 100 Dogecoins without it really costing you much, but you can't do that with Bitcoin for obvious reasons.

<comment><USER24> This sort of thinking is natural but incorrect since cryptocurrencies are divisible to many decimal places. It's just as easy to tip BTC, but tipping .00001 Bitcoins doesn't feel the same as tipping 100 Dogecoins, even though it's just as easy and exactly the same. It's just another one of those things that matters for adoption that nerds would never consider.

<comment><USER15> I'm not sure what you are describing as incorrect. Tipping 100 Bitcoins would cost nearly $100,000. Yes, you can tip the same value in Bitcoins, but tipping a decimal amount is not fun since everyone is conditioned to local currency value that generally goes to 2 decimal places at most. Nerds are considering this. There is a big movement in bitcoin to denominate coins in millibitcoins or microbitcoins.

<comment><USER24> >tipping a decimal amount is not fun since everyone is conditioned to local currency value that generally goes to 2 decimal places at most.

That's all I meant. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> What the Doge's coins actually looked like:

[http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monete_di_Venezia](http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monete_di_Venezia)

</comment><comment><USER26> The reason for the large number of transactions is that so many people are mining Dogecoin. Most miners automatically sell their mined Dogecoin for Bitcoin, and new Dogecoin blocks are mined roughly every 60 seconds.

Several pools have as many as 6000+ individuals currently mining it. Really the only thing preventing the transaction number from being even higher is that most pools only give out accumulated awards to their members every 30 minutes or so (during which the pool may have mined several blocks).

</comment><comment><USER27> But the supply is 28,310,185,834 DOGE.

<comment><USER28> I'm pretty happy to be alive in 2014 to see things like

       But the supply is 28,310,185,834 DOGE.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Much progress, WoW!

<comment><USER30> so doge

<comment><USER31> such currency

<comment><USER32> very wealth

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> IDK, there was an alarming comment on the doge community page that this particular system would soon have a block chain that would be too large to contain on anyone's computer if the transaction volume keeps up. Could be someone (or many people) just spamming transactions for the lulz to make dogecoin unfeasible to keep.

</comment><comment><USER34> Its like silver vs gold. The volume for silver is much higher as its price range is a lot more manageable for people. I also wouldnt be suprised if just one person created the majority of these to push hype. Theyre all a bunch of ponzi schemes. Sadly i also think theyre here to stay for at least a long while.

<comment><USER19> Christ I'm sick of people describing these as Ponzi schemes. It displays a distinct lack of economic (and modern history) knowledge. Especially when the intent matters.

<comment><USER35> Go on then: it pays out a lot to early "investors". It can only maintain this rate of return as long as adoption is increasing. Why is it not a Ponzi scheme?

<comment><USER36> Why don't we just agree that it is legitimate to call it a scam (leaving the question of whether it is a scam out of the issue). I know that this is devolving into a semantic argument, but it clearly isn't a Ponzi scheme, as a particular type of scam.

A Ponzi scheme is an investment that represents account balances that are satisfied from a cash pool that only grows from new investors, and provides fictitious returns on the balances.

This really is quite a simple scheme, but alarmingly effective, because as long as people trust that the account balance is legitimate, and the returns are good, people will not exit the scheme. Sometimes, as (apparently) in Mr. Ponzi's case, this emerges not through an attempt to steal money, but in an attempt to buy time to recover from trading losses.

Do we disagree on the definition of Ponzi scheme here? If we agree on the definition, then I don't see any way that you can claim bitcoin/dogecoin/litecoin is a Ponzi scheme -- there are no account balances (in anything but the coin itself), there's no promised return, there's no cash fund that is satisfying investors making exits (unless there's a massive conspiracy of exchanges).

Maybe you can switch to comparing cryptocurrencies to pump-and-dump schemes? Or just call it a scam, an attempt by the creators to create wealth out of thin air by preying on the gullibility of libertarians.

<comment><USER35> You're right that there's no explicit account balance. Words are imperfect; ultimately bitcoin is a new type of scam. But I want a term that emphasises the disproportionate returns given to the early "investors" \- an ordinary stock pump-and-dump doesn't have bitcoin's built-in deflation. I think a Ponzi scheme is the closest fit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Any reasonable measure of transaction volume should be measured in a stable currency like dollars...and BTC is the leader, far and away here...

<comment><USER38> how about percentage? Bitcoin 5%, Dogecoin 110%

<comment><USER39> Percentage of what? Since there _is_ a relative value between cryptocurrencies, counting volume without taking in account value is meaningless.

I understand Dogecoin has a use (Reddit) and could be a great investment in the future, but currently, it represents only a tiny fraction of what Bitcoin, or Litecoin are.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Dogecoin is going to be the defacto way to give kudos to someone on the internet, i.e., Doge Tip Bot on reddit/twitter. I think with that in mind, Doge is going to expose millions of people to cryptocurrency and actually give them the ability to own at least a few, unlike Bitcoin.

</comment><comment><USER41> The real test for dogecoin is when the reward cuts in half next month, and then half again two months after that.

We'll see who is mining come May. If they still are, then it won.

</comment><comment><USER42> The difference is that bitcoin will likely be considerable more useful next month and next year and dogecoin will be a joke you can read about on the internet.

<comment><USER43> "but, but, I've hitched my cart to _that_ horse!"

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> so transaction

</comment><comment><USER45> OK, so where can I best buy some Dogecoin with BTC?

<comment><USER46> bter.com works pretty well in my personal experience.

Otherwise look at the sidebar at [http://www.reddit.com/r/dogecoin/](http://www.reddit.com/r/dogecoin/) Dogecoin market/exchange for a list of exchanges.

<comment><USER45> Thanks, I successfully bought some via bter</comment></comment></comment>


How Symantec Cracked Stuxnet - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/hack/2011/06/how-symantec-cracked-stuxnet.php#.ThBBmHM9aHo.hackernews <comment><USER2> The whole article is flawed. It sounds more like an advertisement for Symantec anything else.

The title alone is a slap in the face of the many volunteers and various companies that analyzed Stuxnet. Also, in the very first paragraph the author admits that he looked onesidedly at Symantic and nowhere else. And he even makes this sound like something great ("chance to attend a special briefing at Symantec's headquarters"). Ouch. At least he admits this biased view at the very end of the article:

 _> NB: I have done some consulting work for Symantec over the past few years on a variety of security-related projects._

If you want to get some real insights into what techniques were used by Stuxnet, I recommend to watch the 27c3 presentation "Building Custom Disassemblers" by FX:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9ezff6LIoI>

Starting at minute 2:00 he talks about what role he played in the analysis, what obfuscation techniques were used by Stuxnet, and how much some important flaws in the official PLC development tools of Siemens (especially their disassembler) contributed to the problems with analyzing Stuxnet.</comment>


Ask HN: Review my first project (gift certificate templates) - <AUTHOR>

http://www.giftcertificatefactory.com
Background: Christmas time. When asked what I wanted for Christmas, I replied:" an electronic book". Problem is, it doesn't look very good on a christmas tree. Hence came to me the idea of providing gift certificate templates. And pivoting a bit on the idea, I thought that some businesses might be interested in paying to print for pre-designed gift certificate templates! So when I decided to leave my job and create my own company, I decided to start small and create a website filling that need (others exist, see www.giftcarddesigner.com).
What it is: providing pre-designed gift certificate templates that a (small) business owner could personalize online, without using photoshop, paying a designer or microsoft word.
Also, I'm currently bootstrapping this from Jakarta, Indonesia, my business is registered in France, and my main target would be (I assume for now) small american businesses. <comment><USER2> Good looking site and a sensible product idea. A few thoughts:

1\. "GIFT CERTIFICATE TEMPLATES FOR YOUR BUSINESS" is not the best tagline, I think. "Template? What's a template?" Perhaps better is something like "Sell gift certificates for your business". The fact that you're actually selling 'templates' isn't really important to them. What they get is the ability to sell gift certificates.

2\. Below the "sign up to the mailing list" on the front page the information is a bit messy, and there may just be too much of it. What's the difference between the "features" and "about product" tabs? (I don't want you to tell me the answer - I'm just saying it's unclear). Perhaps just grab the most important points and say them as clearly as possible, without requiring clicks onto tabs or anything. Things like "add the name of your company" are probably redundant - I would expect that I would be able to add the name of my company at the very least! I would probably just junk a lot of that stuff and fold it all into a "How it works" page. Then on the front page you just have "Start Printing Gift Certificates" [not 'templates'!] or "How it works"

Various other of your pages could do with cleaning up a bit like that, but overall I think the idea's probably a good one.

One final thought though: is there any fraud prevention involved? What's to stop somebody just making a really good colour photocopy of their gift certificate? You don't have any ID numbers or anything on the certificates, do you?

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for the feedback, it helps a lot! You're right on point 1 and 2, point 2 it's because I used a template from themeforest. This is a MVP and in a second iteration I intend to redesign the site, with less clutter.

Very good point about the "templates" not being what they want, but on the other hand people are looking for "gift certificate templates" on google quite a lot (that's still a small niche of course). Also people might want to give gift certificates, not sell them.

Concerning the fraud prevention, I indeed didn't do anything specifically for it. For now I assume people can add a tracking number (manually) on the front or back. I don't know how much of a deal breaker that is. Maybe people would like a bar code, or serial numbers, or...

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Just curious: what's the interest of registering your business in France? Isn't this the best way to choke on taxes?

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, since I'm french, it was easier. There is a new status called 'autoentrepreneur' and it makes it quite easy for people to start a business (very little tax as long as you don't make more than 80000 euros a year, don't have employees etc).

<comment><USER3> sounds good! I ran away from france to holland a few years ago because of this. I don't remember exactly but the threshold was much lower than 80000€ Wish you lots of luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> funny. I moved from france to holland three years ago, but have now started my business in France this month. I'm currently traveling but am still undecided on where to "settle" :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> clickable: <http://www.giftcertificatefactory.com></comment>


Towards axiomatic morality - <AUTHOR> http://www.dematerialism.net/Chapter%203.html

<comment><USER3> While I like the approach of attempting to derive a moral framework axiomatically, the resulting philosophy experiences one of the main pitfalls that burdens authoritarian Leninism: _it fails to motivate independent agents within the system_.

You can accept the author's implication that discrimination based on intelligence, charisma, good looks, etc is immoral. You can even accept that business and commerce are inherently unfair because they discriminate on such characteristics. Despite all that, a business-based (capitalist) economy is the best way we know to align the interests of the individual with the interests of the society. The author's philosophy completely fails on that front.

There are other failures to this philosophy, but I think that one is the most egregious.

<comment><USER4> can you tldr what immoral means in this context? How did he define this and why should we accept his definition?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think humor paired with axioms has an important part to play in progressing moral codes. Jokes and limericks are memetic - highly contagious ideas - <USER2> they can travel through cultures with little capital and seemingly little effort required.

Going beyond a gag, you can use humor to make an otherwise boring and hard to understand issue like net-neutrality more enticing to listen to, as John Oliver did so masterfully on Last Week Tonight. The way he often does it is by making a point of comparison with pop-culture artifacts (person, movie, consumer goods, historical event) in an analogous and equally absurd situation.

If we could codify this kind of story-telling, we could simplify the passing of moral programs.

<comment><USER6> "this kind of story-telling" is only appealing if you already agreed with the principle. I'm sure someone with a good reason to be against net neutrality could easily pick holes in the Last Week Tonight segment if they wanted.

<comment><USER5> _" this kind of story-telling" is only appealing if you already agreed with the principle_

You need to understand something before you can agree or disagree with it. That's the point of the kind of humor John Oliver uses - take something boring, use humor to attract ears/eyeballs, use well-known cultural artifacts to make a point of comparison, viewer now grasps principals of the issue while being entertained/having reward center tickled.

He also uses analogies because they reveal the absurdity of something without directly attacking someones existing beliefs, leaving wiggle-room to switch sides.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> After a brief skimming on my lunch break: The approach this author takes is similar to the one that Baruch Spinoza uses in formulating a system of ethics, and which David Hume tears apart. His works cited don't reference anything written before the 20th Century, so it looks like the author hasn't done the homework.

The "book" is hard to navigate, this is the whole book's table of contents: [http://dematerialism.net/POS.html](http://dematerialism.net/POS.html)</comment>